Knocking Down The Legend In Waiting

I almost took a trip to Philly last Thursday to check out our rivals play the San Diego Padres. I ultimately decided to skip the game in favor of a couple hours of extra sleep. I missed Vincent Velasquez’s 16 K zero BB performance that made a little bit of history. I have to be honest, it bummed me out a little bit not to be able to say I was there. I mean, baseball is baseball, right? Even though as a buddy of mine would always say, I would have been “funneling money into that communist organization.” And it would have been a few bucks, considering I’m a big fan of the Chickie and Pete’s french fries.

Coming off that start, Velasquez and his restaurant quality curveball would face the Mets for the second time this season. It was a little worrisome after the historic outing that I missed because my old carcass wanted to sleep. (Geezer.) But once Michael Conforto went down and got hold of a curveball and sent it flying to Chester, I knew they would be fine. The Mets obviously did their homework on this guy and proved that his meteoric rise to the top of the baseball world would have to wait at least one more start. Velasquez would give up another home run, a thunderous blast by Yoenis Cespedes before departing so that the Mets could feast on the Phillies bullpen, which is all I asked of the Mets from the beginning: feast on bad bullpens. Neil Walker took an extra helping of Brett Oberholtzer stuffing with two righthanded home runs off the lefty, while Lucas Duda continued his current hot streak by turning a baseball into the tenth planet … also off Oberholtzer. Curtis Granderson took James Russell deep to complete the massacre.

Then for good measure, there was this:

There was a lot of talk out of the booth tonight comparing this year’s Matt Harvey to Ron Darling’s 1987 season. If Harvey ends up with Darling’s ’87 numbers this season, I’ll jump off the Shea Bridge now. But thankfully, the Mets are being bailed out by Logan Verrett, who is so far shaping up to be this year’s Terry Leach … or at the very least what the Mets hoped John Mitchell and Tom Edens could have been in 1987. Verrett threw six shutout innings giving up six hits, walking one, striking out four, and even hitting a stand up double. Put it all together and you have an 11-1 Mets victory. After struggling with the Phillies at home, it seems that a dose of that shoebox that the Phillies play in was just what the Mets needed. The legend of Vincent Velasquez will have to wait another day.

Today’s Hate List

1. Ryan Howard
2. Vincent Velasquez
3. Matt Cullen
4. Kars 4 Kids commercials
5. Ryan White